HEAR SPOTT FARM'S CHRISTMAS RECORD ON CBC3

http://radio3.cbc.ca/bands/SPOTT-FARM
SO WHY A CHRISTMAS RECORD?
 It could have been because of our commitment to the completely non-commercial approach which coloured our whole career as a band.  Or it may have been the perception that most pop singles have a radio-active half life of about one month, whereas a Christmas song has a chance to stick around and pop up year after year. It was definitely NOT in any way due to our overwhelming religiosity or Xtian fundamentalism.
The plain truth is that we had been performing a medley of Christmas songs since our first winter together (1970) and people used to ask if they could get a recording of it.
 So it came to pass that in 1974, when we were planning to appear at a Music Conference in Kitchener slated for November, we hastily booked the newly-built state-of-the-art Mercey Brother's recording studio outside of Elmira Ont. and prepared to record this piece of Christmas cheer.
 None of us had any real studio experience so naturally we decided to produce the thing ourselves. The youngest of the Mercey's was engaged as engineer, as none of the other brothers had the slightest idea how to run the equipment, and on the appointed day we lugged our gear into the studio, set up and began to play live to 16 tracks. It took a few tries with the clock ticking and the $ meter running; but before the night was over we had two sides mixed and mastered and ready to press. I think the only overdubs were the Tympanum (for the transition from "Oh Holy Night" to the Christmas Wish) and probably the harmony vocals were added later.
 The A side (remember when records had sides?) was an arrangement of the "Oh Holy Night" carol with other carols melded in as counterpoint, segueing into a Hutt/Jarvis composition: "A Christmas Wish" with music by Rick and words by Jerome. The B side was a group arrangement of the classic K. Davis tune "Drummer Boy" mostly arranged by Rick; but all of us took a kick at it as well.
A label was created "RURAL RECORDS" and hastily registered with the Library of Congress (form E foreign) The design featured a square box around the oversized round hole, and the whole thing was "(C) 1970" (form E foreign again) and came back from the manufacturers just in time for the conference.
 We booked a room for our manager Donald Blair at the con hotel over the weekend of the event. Jeff Beckner drew us a poster for the SPOTT FARM CHRISTMAS RECORD. We had a half hour slot to play   at the showcase, going on just before Valdy.
 After the conference we sat around our picnic table cutting up and taping cardboard sleeves for shipping and hand-adressed 300 copies which we mailed out to radio stations across Canada. Someone must have played it on air since Rick and I each got a ten dollar royalty cheque from CAPAC and that was our brush with fame.
Great Thanks are due to John Gardiner who graciously allowed his (36 year old) copy of the 45 to be loaned out and digitized. Jerome did the re-mastering in November of 2010 and posted it to the Radio 3 CBC web site. Follow the link there and hear this strange artifact from a time gone by.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL !